"Oh, yes, I do," said Percival, with a sly demureness. "I am very fond
of--my mother!"

"Very proper and filial," said Varney, laughing; "and does your love for
the sex stop there?"

"Well, and in truth I fancy so,--pretty nearly. You know my grandmother
is not alive! But that is something really worth looking at!" And
Percival pointed, almost with a child's delight, at an illumination more
brilliant than the rest.

"I suppose, when you come of age, you will have all the cedars at
Laughton hung with coloured lamps. Ah, you must ask me there some day; I
should so like to see the old place again."

"You never saw it, I think you say, in my poor father's time?"

"Never."

"Yet you knew him."

"But slightly."

"And you never saw my mother?"

"No; but she seems to have such influence over you that I am sure she
must be a very superior person,--rather proud, I suppose."

"Proud, no,--that is, not exactly proud, for she is very meek and very